Theatre review: Two Johnnies Live Upstairs

IF YOU like your theatre madder than a sack of badgers, catch this almost indescribably bonkers promenade performance before it's gone forever.

On arrival at the venue - a grand Georgian townhouse on Randolph Crescent - we are met by William Stanguennec, descendant of the late onion trader Jean Stanguennec. With a megawatt smile he seems able to turn on and off with unerring speed, William takes us on a tour of the family home, from the onion-chopping room, where we observe his technique, to the onion-drying room, which smells as bad as you might imagine, to Old Man Stanguennec's drawing room, which looks out to the Firth of Forth, allowing the family to watch their vital onion shipments sailing into port.

On his deathbed, Old Man Stanguennec instructed his various nephews to continue his legacy - "whatever you do, do it with onions" - and so we are taken down to the basement to see how the next generation of Stanguennecs has been diversifying the family business.

I'm not going to tell you what they've been getting up to - not only would it ruin the surprise, it would probably bring a visit from the Scottish SPCA - but the weirdness met thus far pales into insignificance on entering this laboratory of nuttiness.

The overarching narrative starts to creak a little when we are then ushered into a tiny library for a beautiful bit of storytelling from Jonathan Stanguennec (Nidal Qannari) - an interlude which doesn't seem to relate to the premise. By that point, though, your sense of what's logical has been so badly eroded you probably won't find it odd when Qannari starts fiddling about with sardines.